Emergency medicine’s role in the management of a respiratory illness multiple casualty incident

Abstract

This cross-sectional retrospective descriptive study was performed to determine the role of the emergency medicine in the management of thunderstorms associated asthma Multiple Casualty Incident (MCI) and to give an overview of affected patient characteristics. Eligible participants were all patients presented to the ED with acute bronchospasm, between 2nd-7th November, 2013. Not only available medical records of all patients were gathered and analyzed, retrospectively but also the effectiveness of the MCI plan designed by emergency medicine was reviewed. There was no gender priority in the studied population (201 male, 242 female). The majority of affected patients were aged between 20-40 (278 out of 443). Only 40 patients of all 443 were admitted (37 in the pulmonary ward and 3 in the ICU). No mortality in the ED was reported. Over 50% of patients had a positive history of asthma, allergies have been treated at least once for shortness of breath or asthma previously. Our findings illustrate that described respiratory illness MCI seems to have a benign course, since the majority of patients discharged home. Besides, the designed protocol for treatment of patients and managing the MCI were obviously effective.